‘There is a moral decay in the body of America: antisemitism is just the beginning’

DAN COLEMAN analyses the extremism infiltrating the Republican Party and suggests the fight to preserve pluralistic democracy may be the Jewish cause for our time.

“How many people in the last few years have been at a dining room conversation where the topic has turned to where might we move?” This was the question posed recently by Rabbi Daniel Zemel to the congregation at Temple Micah in Washington, DC.

As reported by congregant and Washington Post columnist Dana Millbank, Rabbi Zemel “was talking about the unthinkable: that Jews might need to flee the United States.” On the eve of the US mid-term elections, that’s one expression of how frightening the political situation in the United States has become for American Jews.

Rabbi Zemel is hardly alone. Wondering where Jews might move “is among the most frequently asked questions that I get,” Jonathan Greenblatt, head of the Anti-Defamation League, told Millbank.

Bringing this concern from the pulpit to the political arena, last month the Jewish Democratic Council of America launched a $US250,000 ad campaign in key states warning that “history may repeat itself unless we act”.

The organisation’s CEO, Halie Soifer, explained that “white supremacy and extremism have been normalised within the Republican Party and pose a grave threat to Jewish Americans and other minorities … nothing less than the future of our democracy and security are on the ballot in this [mid-term] election.”

In Pittsburgh on Saturday, former president Barack Obama weighed in, calling out politicians and celebrities who are “reposting vile, antisemitic conspiracy theories.”

“You don’t have to be a student of history,” Obama said, “to understand how dangerous and unacceptable that is.”

Over the past five years, Jewish Americans have witnessed the ratcheting up of antisemitic and white supremacist rhetoric with the encouragement of former president Donald Trump. They have witnessed rhetoric transform into violence, from the 2018 massacre at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue to the January 6, 2021, riot at the US Capitol, to last month’s vicious attack on Paul Pelosi by an extremist in search of Pelosi’s wife, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, long subject to vilification by the Republicans.

Just last week, the New York Times reported that the FBI had warned synagogues across New Jersey of “credible information” of an increased level of risk, asking that they “take all security precautions to protect your community and facility”.

Donald Trump continues to cast an ominous shadow over the growing threat to American Jews. Last month, he excoriated Jewish Democrats for their “disloyalty” to Israel, telling them they’d better “get their act together and appreciate what they have in Israel. Before it is too late”

“Before it is too late” may sound like a vague threat, much like Trump’s “stand down and stand by” instruction to the Proud Boys in September 2020. But, now as then, there are forces more than willing to enact the full measure of Trump’s implications.

In 2022, for a Republican to win their primary for today’s mid-term elections, it was virtually a necessity to swear allegiance to Trump and declare the invalidity of the 2020 election, thereby receiving the Trump seal of approval. The result is hundreds of candidates who show scant regard for the institutions that historically have safeguarded American democracy or for the norms of civil society, candidates who often adhere to the most extreme views of QAnon and white supremacy.

For Jews, this amounts to a frightening confluence as the forces of antisemitism rise up precisely at the time when the traditions and institutions of liberalism that have kept Jews safe are under assault.

If there is a ground zero in this struggle, it is in the swing state of Pennsylvania, one of the half-dozen states whose 2020 election results were tenaciously contested by Trump. The governor’s race pits current Pennsylvania Attorney-General Josh Shapiro, an observant Jew, against state senator Doug Mastriano, a QAnon adherent, Christian nationalist, and close ally of Trump. Mastriano was a leading proponent of Trump’s “stop the steal” campaign, organised bus rides to Washington for January 6, and was identified in crowd-sourced video as among the rioters.

Mastriano has paid thousands in consulting fees to Gab, a social media site that provides a home to far-Right extremists, including the shooter at the 2018 Tree of Life massacre. Gab’s founder is a vocal antisemite and co-author of a just-published book on Christian Nationalism. Mastriano is among many Republicans who have compared abortion to the Holocaust. He has also compared gun control reform to 1930s Nazi policy.

When Shapiro, who keeps kosher and attends synagogue, said his faith is central to his politics, Mastriano adviser and former Trump attorney Jenna Ellis shot back, “Josh Shapiro is at best a secular Jew”.

When Mastriano was accused of antisemitism, his wife, Rebecca Mastriano, channelling Trump, responded: “We love Israel more than most Jews.”

While support for Israel may be a litmus test for America’s tens of millions of evangelical Christians, it is not the highest priority for most Jewish voters. Jews are more likely to appraise Trump and Trump-supported candidates by the wave of antisemitism they are unleashing across the Right and by their casual acceptance of violence as a means of achieving political ends.

Republican candidates across the country have quoted Göring, vilified Soros, evoked the “great replacement” theory, and denied the Holocaust, all while declaring themselves great friends of Israel.

The Tree of Life massacre, the deadliest assault on Jews in US history, marked its fourth anniversary last month. One survivor, the synagogue’s rabbi, Jeffrey Myers, surveyed the political landscape and concluded, “There is a moral decay occurring in the body of America.

“Antisemitism is just the beginning; it moves beyond antisemitism to cover other minority groups. All good people need to not merely post on social media – they need to speak out loudly and firmly say: ‘This is unacceptable. This is not what it means to be an American.’”

Dana Millbank concluded his recent column with the admission that, “I’ve thought about where my family might go if the worst happened here. But we’re not going anywhere. The only choice is to stay and fight for our liberal democracy. As my rabbi, Danny Zemel, put it on Kol Nidre: ‘If there is a Jewish message for our time, it is to support our great experiment with every fibre of our being.’

“If it isn’t safe here, it won’t be safe anywhere.”

As if to underscore Millbank’s warning, last Friday The Age reported a shed discovered in Melbourne’s outer north containing “an arsenal of weapons fit to arm a platoon”, allegedly stockpiled by a man who “flirted with violent right-wing extremism.”

In Australia, as in the US, the fight to preserve liberal, pluralistic democracy might also become the Jewish cause for our time.

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Photo: A trailer donned with messages for Donald Trump and Doug Mastriano, Republican nominee for governor of Pennsylvania, is seen in western Pennsylvania on October 17 (Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call/Sipa USA)